Atta-Boy!

Almost as satisfying as seeing the cleared ground in the rock garden is watching the piles of pulled weeds grow.  It's my own personal "atta-boy."  Only the lone iris (and weeds) grows...water the rocks as I might, they stubbornly refuse to do anything but lie there.  Inspector Frank is on the job, suggesting that I might want to haul those weed piles away now.

Behind the lavender bed (about half done with the weeding there), those tall, spiky things are wild mullein, a medicinal herb.  These have sprung up in the area where the brush pile used to be.  Huge furry leaves and five- to six-foot-tall spikes that will eventually have lovely yellow flowers, mullein thrives on neglect and sprouts up everywhere.  Feverfew, which has tiny, daisy-like flowers, is also in bloom now, as is St. John's wort, which has bright yellow flowers.  There is a bank of wort around the circular part of the driveway, but until today I never knew what it was.  If a "weed" stays green without effort on my part, has pretty flowers, and isn't obstructing an area I want for something else, I leave it be...as do the deer, which is an added bonus.

Waiting for my milk customers (due at eleven-thirty, arriving at five-thirty), I didn't want to get into a dirty outside project like weedeating the garden.  After enough housework to feel I'd paid my dues for the day, I gave in to a craving for cookies.  Laughing to myself as I mixed one batch of oatmeal-raisin dough, I remembered all the cookies I baked for the Kids back in the day.  One batch of anything wouldn't have been worth getting the bowls dirty; any one of the Kids could have been the prototype for the Cookie Monster.  Like baby birds, they stood around the oven waiting for the first pans to come out, and those cookies were gone in a magician's flash.  Rarely did the Kids have bought cookies in their school lunches, so I did a lot of baking in those days.  I once found a recipe for molasses cookies that made twelve dozen.  We were going on a road trip so I doubled it, thinking they'd have treats in the car.  The soft cookies clumped up in the bags and could only be broken off in chunks, and it turned out the Kids weren't fond of molasses in the first place.  Go figure.

When my customers arrived, they came bearing several tomato plants that came from a friend of theirs.  Unlabeled, these mystery tomatoes are some type of heirloom varieties.  What fun it will be to find out what's in the surprise packages.  They also brought two Black Beauty eggplant plants.  My own seeds for eggplant did not sprout, so these are treasures.  Craig and I are the only ones who will be thrilled by the eggplants; as Craig says, "More for you and me!"

Being the adult that I am, after careful consideration I decided that six cookies in each hand constituted a balanced diet for dinner.